Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

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Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby blehblah » Mon Dec 07, 2015 2:59 pm

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canad ... -see-logic

This one is truly absurd. Right, so this woman makes a habit of protesting bearing witness outside pig slaughterhouses. That's all fine and dandy. She also started giving pigs water when the truck hauling them stopped at a light. Naturally, the owner/driver was rather angry. That's kinda wonky on its own, but don't forget to queue the truly absurd media tither and directly related slacktivism!

As it turns out, farmers really do know best when it comes to their livestock. Even today, an Ontario ministry of agriculture regulation recommends pigs aren’t fed for 12 to 18 hours before they’re slaughtered. This helps prevent contamination from, well, poop not yet pooped. It also keeps hogs from getting sick en route to the abattoir. And it’s proof that what might seem humane to a city slicker, might not actually be the best practice, which brings us back to the water and what we ignore when we talk about slaughterhouses.

When Anita Krajnc — who helped found a group called Toronto Pig Save that holds vigils outside abattoirs — shoved a water bottle through a metal truck to slake the thirst of a doomed pig, she actually could have been putting the food chain at risk of contamination.

...

The story of a woman facing jail time for giving a pig water in the heat is so absurd it went viral, and, of course, perfectly reasonable people became incensed by this overreach of the law. I’ve even seen people bite into a double-bacon-burger with cheese while tweeting their outrage.

...

As an aside, Krajnc wrote a Toronto Star op-ed this week as to compare livestock to approximately 12 million people who we chained, abused, dehumanized and shoved into boats and forced across the Atlantic in one of history’s darkest episodes.

“It’s wrong to see pigs as property, just as it was wrong hundreds of years ago to see human slaves as property and women as chattel — the property of men. The law needs changing,” she wrote.

You know what’s like the slave trade? The slave trade. That’s it.

[ZING!]

So whether you’re a carnivore, an occasional meat eater a vegan or someone who’s trying to cut back on the bacon for health or environmental reasons, if you really want to improve pigs lot on the way to slaughter, water bottles aren’t the answer. But advocating for practical solutions isn’t possible when you’re more interested in playing the martyr to angel pig slaves.


To be clear - I don't care about people's eating habits. I understand that there are vegetarians/vegans who are so because they reject everything about animals and agriculture. Even the angle that anti-anything people tend to wish to push their agenda on others more than pro-anything people (a sweeping generalization, yes, but it holds-up). It's the completely back asswards ways that people tackle things today.

People sometimes approach issues in such a completely all-or-nothing way that there is absolutely no hope of progress. I'm a meat eater, and I have grave concerns about factory pig farming and slaughter. I buy from a butcher who sources locally, etc. However, as the article mentions, part of the problem is the body of regulation around slaughter. At least the pigs I munch are not factory-raised, so let's chalk that up as incremental improvement. I encourage others to do so, if they have the wherewithal. I would really like to hear more people discussing these things, and look at how the system can be improved.

On the other hand, peruse through the comments to that article. You'll quickly see a pattern. Some folks bring-up facts and logic, which are summarily rejected by the all-or-nothing crowd (there's one particularly active person on there). At one point, someone talks about a scientist who has done tons of research into making the raising and slaughtering of animals for food more humane. The commenter instantly dismisses the scientist as a corporate shill. Another responds that they know the scientist personally, and she is the real deal, etc. The same 'all-or-nothing' retorts that no matter what incremental changes are undertaken, it's still the same (because - uhm - all or nothing!).

It strikes me that these people are, quite simply, boorish. Whether at a dinner table or on an airplane, they would be terrible to be stuck with. There is a relentless drive to push their beliefs upon anyone within earshot that puts them on par with the most unbearable people in any cause. Once someone declares anything to be the equivalent of the slave trade, the ringing in my ears drowns-out anything else that person might say.

The complete unwillingness to accept that maybe, just maybe, the approach is not going to work is part of it. Of course, someone who is all-or-nothing will outright reject any other approach, because extremes are built by self-confirmation.

In this case, Anita Krajnc decided that pigs should not be property after some sort of epiphany when encountering a truck full of pigs. To her, anything short of pigs not being property is wrong. Therefore, understanding the complexities of the industry - the farmers, the regulations, the economics, the choices people make and why they make them; indeed, why pigs are in trucks driving here and there - is of no consequence because they all stem from something that is wrong.

Here is the Op-Ed she wrote for Toronto Star:

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commenta ... water.html

It goes well enough until this passage:

It’s wrong to see pigs as property, just as it was wrong hundreds of years ago to see human slaves as property and women as chattel — the property of men. The law needs changing.

Before my court appearance, I was reading Tolstoy’s book My Religion: What I Believe. It had a most pertinent section on finding true meaning in life. It was not living selfishly and acquiring wealth, fame, and glory, but giving food to the hungry and water to the thirsty, living a life of service, and ministering to the suffering.


*sigh*

Anyhow, it comes down to, 'So I'm out walking my dog when I see this trailer full of pigs, and BAM, it occurs to me that owning an animal is like slavery!'.
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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby sunglasses » Mon Dec 07, 2015 3:26 pm

*hides the long pork bacon she was making out of orphans*

I know nothing about any of those topics.
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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby BROWNRECLUSE » Mon Dec 07, 2015 3:49 pm

sunglasses wrote:*hides the long pork bacon she was making out of orphans*

I know nothing about any of those topics.


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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby Matthew Notch » Mon Dec 07, 2015 3:58 pm

For what it's worth, orphans would make garbage bacon. Not enough fat on their bellies.

I think this is an interesting story because I know how that lady feels sometimes. Like, you witness something that kind of disturbs you, and suddenly you feel like you're never going to forgive yourself if you don't do... something. Anything! And in the thick of things, when you have minutes or less to make a move, you can't think through how complicated things really are and how your actions may reverberate down the line. This is a good thing when there's a kid stuck under a car and you have to get it off him quickly. It's not so good when you're dealing with something more complex than "this is a living thing". When I put it that way it sounds kind of horrible, but it's the honest truth no matter what.

The thing is, a person, once he or she does realize that his or her most sincere efforts may have had a negative effect rather than the positive that was expected, has to accept this and move on. Instead this lady is digging in and insisting on her own righteousness, and that's when it all starts getting hacky, no matter the context. The results of stubbornly hanging onto an ideal in the face of evidence of it causing harm can have effects that range from annoying to devastating. Even then I still believe that sometimes faith in an idea is more important than avoiding any harm, but that's a relatively rare occurrence.

Eh, makes me think anyway.
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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby A Warrior Bunny » Mon Dec 07, 2015 4:07 pm

Personally I'm most concerned with how she describes her dog in the second paragraph.

Anita Krajnc wrote:Peering in, I was met face to face with sad and terrified pigs, each one eerily similar to the dog standing by my side.


Why is her dog so terrified? Is she purposefully terrifying it? There's no way it knows/understands what's going on, so that leaves me to believe that the dog is terrified of her.
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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby Paradox » Mon Dec 07, 2015 4:10 pm

It's things like this that makes it obvious why they have to write "Do Not Eat" on silica gel packets.
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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby blehblah » Mon Dec 07, 2015 4:57 pm

Matthew Notch wrote:For what it's worth, orphans would make garbage bacon. Not enough fat on their bellies.

[snip]

Eh, makes me think anyway.


Like the kindhearted cannibal said, "I never met a man I didn't like".

I don't know what I mean by that... it just strikes me as funny (odd-funny and funny-funny).
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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby Crimson847 » Mon Dec 07, 2015 5:23 pm

It strikes me that these people are, quite simply, boorish. Whether at a dinner table or on an airplane, they would be terrible to be stuck with. There is a relentless drive to push their beliefs upon anyone within earshot that puts them on par with the most unbearable people in any cause. Once someone declares anything to be the equivalent of the slave trade, the ringing in my ears drowns-out anything else that person might say.


Blehblah, if practicality, civility, and effective communication are values you believe in, it might be more productive to ask yourself why you opted to make a lot of very broad and insulting assumptions about her personal character without any means of verifying such claims.

If raising the tone of a debate and fully understanding where the people that you're mad at are coming from is so easy that people like this woman deserve to be insulted for failing to do so, then simply sticking to the facts and avoiding personal attacks should be trivially simple. After all, nothing starts people's ears ringing like a personal insult from someone who knows virtually nothing about them.
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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby cmsellers » Mon Dec 07, 2015 5:33 pm

sunglasses wrote:*hides the long pork bacon she was making out of orphans*

I know nothing about any of those topics.

If you're going to salt the tender flesh of our nation's youth with their own tears, Ms. Glasses, you had better make enough for everybody!

Matthew Notch wrote:For what it's worth, orphans would make garbage bacon. Not enough fat on their bellies.

That's why you force-feed them a diet of puppies and kittens for a month first.
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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby Crimson847 » Mon Dec 07, 2015 5:55 pm

A Warrior Bunny wrote:Personally I'm most concerned with how she describes her dog in the second paragraph.

Anita Krajnc wrote:Peering in, I was met face to face with sad and terrified pigs, each one eerily similar to the dog standing by my side.


Why is her dog so terrified? Is she purposefully terrifying it? There's no way it knows/understands what's going on, so that leaves me to believe that the dog is terrified of her.


She didn't say her dog was terrified, she said that the pigs reminded her of her dog.

When Obama said "if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon", he didn't mean his hypothetical son would also be dead from a gunshot wound. He meant that he saw something familiar in Trayvon's face, something that tugged on his heartstrings and inspired sympathy. Presumably this woman felt a similar sense of instinctive sympathy.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby Tesseracts » Mon Dec 07, 2015 6:03 pm

I agree with Crimson, but it's also not really a sign of abuse if a dog is terrified of a bunch of large screaming animals. Dogs are often afraid of unfamiliar creatures.
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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby Australia » Mon Dec 07, 2015 6:42 pm

All I heard was 'bacon'.

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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby blehblah » Mon Dec 07, 2015 8:22 pm

Crimson847 wrote:
It strikes me that these people are, quite simply, boorish. Whether at a dinner table or on an airplane, they would be terrible to be stuck with. There is a relentless drive to push their beliefs upon anyone within earshot that puts them on par with the most unbearable people in any cause. Once someone declares anything to be the equivalent of the slave trade, the ringing in my ears drowns-out anything else that person might say.


Blehblah, if practicality, civility, and effective communication are values you believe in, it might be more productive to ask yourself why you opted to make a lot of very broad and insulting assumptions about her personal character without any means of verifying such claims.

If raising the tone of a debate and fully understanding where the people that you're mad at are coming from is so easy that people like this woman deserve to be insulted for failing to do so, then simply sticking to the facts and avoiding personal attacks should be trivially simple. After all, nothing starts people's ears ringing like a personal insult from someone who knows virtually nothing about them.


Is that sarcasm? Anyone - help me... it looks like sarcasm, but the best sarcasm is when you don't know.

EDIT: Oh, wait - it's a thing that isn't sarcasm... it's... an -ism, but it doesn't have a point... it's... uhm... mockery? Mocharisming?
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Last edited by blehblah on Mon Dec 07, 2015 8:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby Ceiling_Squid » Mon Dec 07, 2015 8:25 pm

If she wants to argue that pigs are sapient creatures who can be "enslaved", she'll have to go farther to prove that than simply sharing a personal epiphany.

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Re: Absurdity - Giving Pigs Water for Justice!

Postby cmsellers » Mon Dec 07, 2015 8:34 pm

blehblah wrote:It strikes me that these people are, quite simply, boorish.

So would you say that this woman is a bit of a boar?
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